Sharp-Dressed Man: professional sharpening techniques

Sharp-Dressed Man: professional sharpening techniques

Photographer | Dave Moser

Okay, I have to admit, not every sharpening technique in this chapter is a professional technique. For example, the first one, “Basic Sharpening,” is clearly not a professional technique, although many professionals sharpen their images exactly as shown in that tutorial (applying the Unsharp Mask to the RGB composite—I’m not even sure what that means, but it sounds good). There’s a name for these professionals—“lazy.” But then one day, they think to themselves, “Geez, I’m kind of getting tired of all those color halos and other annoying artifacts that keep showing up in my sharpened photos,” and they wish there was a way to apply more sharpening, and yet avoid these pitfalls. At that point, they’re looking for some professional sharpening techniques that will avoid those problems (and the best of those techniques are included in this chapter—the same sharpening techniques used by today’s leading digital photographers and retouchers). But as soon as they learn these advanced techniques, they turn around and write Actions for them so they’ll be applied with just the touch of one button. But automating this process in this way is not seen as lazy. In fact, now they’re seen as being “productive,” “efficient,” and “smart.” Why? Because life ain’t fair. How unfair is it? I’ll give you an example. A number of leading professional photographers have worked for years to come up with these advanced sharpening techniques, which took tedious testing, experimentation, and research; and then you come along, buy this book, and suddenly you’re using the same techniques they are, but you didn’t even expend a bead of sweat. You know what that’s called? Cool!